COMMENT: The spectre of Brexit has somewhat dropped off the radar with the massive focus on COVID-19. It does not mean, however, that Brexit has gone away, writes Mike Mundy.
In the UK, at the time of writing, we are hearing that a deal is close – 95 per cent done is the actual phrase! It looks like it will get over the line but that does not mean that all the players will be ready. Mind you in the UK we are used to that. At the beginning of the COVID-19 crisis Matt Hancock, the UK’s Secretary for Health, highlighted the fact that we were well prepared to cope with it. Subsequent events have proved far from it.
The UK’s National Audit Office clearly thinks a similar scenario is in evidence with BREXIT. In mid-November it issued a report on preparations for the end of the transition period after BREXIT. The report is critical of the UK Government for its lack of proper preparation and specifically for the failure to respond to the predictable administrative consequences of the process.
Interestingly, some parties suggest this lack of preparation was always going to happen as proper and comprehensive action in this respect would inevitably raise big question marks and concerns about the many promises made by Leave campaigners which ultimately suggested that the UK could “have our cake and eat it.”
As Brendan Donnelly a Senior Research Fellow at the Global Policy Unit, Director of the Federal Trust and a former Member of the European Parliament puts it: “To have initiated in good time the necessary wide-ranging programmes to deal with the negative economic consequences of BREXIT would have been an implicit concession of the arguments underpinning the Remain case, which had focused almost exclusively on the economic disbenefits of the UK leaving the European Union.
"It could never be in the political interests of the Leave campaigners dominating the British government to advertise by obtrusive preparations the wide-ranging bureaucratic formalities BREXIT would bring.”
Right or wrong, what this does is underline the inherent difficulty in getting things done at a practical level – namely making comprehensive preparations for BREXIT – with an intensively political climate in play and not least with negotiations that go to the wire! The shape of things to come is already plain to see.
In September, eight UK logistics industry groups wrote to UK Cabinet Minister Michael Gove asking for assistance to prevent chaos at the British borders after the Brexit transition period. The letter, coordinated by the UK Road Haulage Association, requested a roundtable with key UK Government ministers in order to address the “significant gaps” in readiness for BREXIT.
Equally telling, the UK Government’s Smart Freight System, designed to ensure that trucks are carrying the correct documentation before they arrive at ports, will be operable but only in test mode on 1 January, 2021. The system will apparently only be fully operational from April 2021. With the influence of politics underpinning the practical preparations for BREXIT, “what,” as the old saying goes could possibly go wrong?
